


Fear

by Moraith



Category: Death Parade (Anime)
Genre: Character Study, Drinking, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 08:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12526688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moraith/pseuds/Moraith
Summary: The three rules of being an Arbiter are the following:1: Arbiters cannot quit making judgments, for that is the reason why they exist.2: Arbiters cannot experience death, for that would bring them too close to being human.3: Arbiters cannot feel emotion, for they are dummies.Nona has had doubts about those rules for a long time. It's hard not to if you're paying attention.





	Fear

_What is the most fundamental human emotion?_

She was told, as all Arbiters are, that she did not have a name. Her duties were explained long before anything else. She was an Arbiter, meant to judge the souls of humanity. She must never stop, for judgment was her purpose. She could neither live nor die. She had no human emotions.

She was given a name before long and put to work on the ninth floor. Humans were not often sent to her. When they were, she observed them closely. She had an instinctive understanding as, she supposed, all Arbiters must, of what actions were 'good' and what actions were 'bad.' Self-sacrifice was deserving of reward. Harming others for one's own gain was deserving of punishment. Kindness; cruelty. Laughter, when shared with others; laughter, when others suffered.

She pit humans against each other in games designed to encourage cruelly harming one another for one's own gain and sent soul after soul into the depths of the Void. They often cried and shouted and attacked each other during the games. Less often, they smiled and laughed and spoke gently to each other. She knew what those things meant to her; as she sent souls—smiling, weeping, thrashing—away, she wondered what humans meant by them.

_What is the most fundamental human emotion?_

She didn't think anything in particular of her name until a few years after she began her work.

“Shouldn't it be Novem?” one of the other Arbiters asked her. It was Unus, from the first floor. He had taken it upon himself to sample the drinks from every single bar in the tower, starting from his own at the bottom and working his way up.

She poured drinks for the two of them, at Unus's insistence. “Hmm? Why do you say that?” she asked. She slid his glass across the counter to him.

“We're all named after numbers, right? Nine is novem. If you're Nona, you should be up at the top,” Unus said, pointing up to the ceiling. He held his glass gingerly halfway to his mouth. “I don't know if I can drink something that green...”

“Don't order a grasshopper, then,” Nona said blithely. She sipped her own drink, then tapped her fingernails lightly on her glass. Nona Ginta, the ninetieth floor; the very top of the tower. “I must be destined for greatness.”

Unus snorted. He frowned at his drink again, then downed it in one go. Nona took another slow sip to hide her amused smirk as he struggled to wrangle his facial expression into something not disgusted and deeply regretful. “There isn't a bar up there, is there?”

Nona shrugged. “I don't think so.” She finished off her drink and set the glass down on the counter.

“If _that_ was your best drink, there had better not be,” Unus said, glaring at the empty glass in front of him.

“More evidence that I'm destined for greatness.” Nona felt the familiar rush of information flood into her head: names and memories and causes of death. She blinked, then smiled at Unus. “Looks like I have work to do. Better clear out.”

Unus stood up and headed for the elevator. He saluted Nona lazily on his way out. “Thanks for the drink, Nona.”

“Any time,” Nona said. She cleaned up the empty glasses and wiped down the counter and waited for her guests to arrive.

They were sisters, both of whom were run over by a drunk driver as they walked to the subway station after their first reunion in years. A game of charades later, the two of them had laid their hearts bare. They screamed and clawed and fought desperately for victory. They knew each other well enough to target each other's weak points and insecurities with pinpoint accuracy. Years of betrayal and heartbreak and confusion and misunderstanding came to the surface, despite the barriers to communication. At the end of the game, Nona pried them out of each other's arms and sent them, bloody and battered with tears streaming down their faces and begging for forgiveness, off to be reincarnated with a smile on her face.

_What is the most fundamental human emotion?_

Unus was right. After a short seven years of work as an Arbiter, Nona was promoted to manager and moved to the ninetieth floor to watch over the rest of the tower. She had never met the mysterious Oculus who claimed to be the one in charge of the tower before, but it seemed that he knew her and he liked her work.

There was, in fact, a bar on the ninetieth floor, though it was markedly different from the ones below it. Nona Ginta was a misty field with ancient crumbling columns and walls scattered here and there and trees growing off in hidden corners. The whole area sloped down toward the center of the room where a house perched on a small island in the center of a large lake with clear sparkling water. Inside the house, in the spacious living room, was a small bar of the type one would expect to find in a private residence.

It didn't get much use. No human guests were ever sent to Nona Ginta, though they could have been. The main purpose of Nona Ginta was to serve as the birthplace for new Arbiters. The new occupant of the ninth floor, later christened “Novem,” much to Nona's amusement, was one of the first she watched over and sent to work. She noted as she was showing him to the subway, then the elevator, that she could no longer recall who had done this for her. She didn't bother to inquire. It was probably for the same reason she could not recall the names or faces of the humans she judged; a simple problem of capacity. An Arbiter's mind could only hold so much information and continue to operate. If it was irrelevant to her duties, she had no use for it.

She told every new arbiter the nature of their existence and the rules they had to abide by. They were not allowed to stop judging humans, they could neither live nor die, and they did not have human emotions.

Nona spent much more of her time in the company of other Arbiters as a manager than she ever had the opportunity to before. They all had different methods and standards for judgment, which gave Nona pause. She had assumed when she was in their position that she felt so confident in her judgments because they were innate. All Arbiters are created for the sole purpose of seeing and evaluating the darkness of the human psyche. They do not have human emotions. They do not live. They do not die. And yet, they disagreed with one another.

“Say... what do you think human emotions are?” she asked once. She was at Quindecim, speaking to her personal favorite Arbiter. She scolded Quin for her talkativeness and careless cheer often in a professional capacity, but she privately found them charming. That peculiar lack of inhibition set her apart from the other Arbiters. She didn't think deeply enough about the words coming out of her mouth to censor herself.

Quin downed a shot of whiskey with pure unbridled delight, then slammed the glass down on the counter. She made a satisfied sound in the back of her throat, then gave Nona a lopsided grin and said, “Human emotions? What's with that all of a sudden?” She rubbed her chin and hummed and rocked back and forth on her heels. “Probably... happiness, sadness, anger... that sort of thing, right?”

“But we have all those. Rule number three: Arbiters cannot feel emotion, because they are dummies.”

Quin screwed up her face and glanced down at the floor. “I always thought that one was weird. Don't you? All the humans we deal with are attached to dummies, too.” She waved a hand in the air dismissively, laughing awkwardly at herself. “Not that I'm saying the rule is wrong or anything! I'm sure it's different. You know what I mean.”

“Of course,” Nona said, though she didn't. She suspected Quin didn't either.

Quin laughed again, brighter and more hearty. “Anyhow! Human emotions have to be ones we don't have, right? By definition. So...” She held up a hand and started counting off on her fingers. “...love, desperation, hunger, thirst, shame...”

“I think you're just shameless, Quin,” Nona said, leaning forward and resting her elbows on the bar. “The rest of us have some standards.” She looked pointedly at the empty shot glass. “Besides, you love alcohol.”

Quin grinned and put her hands on her hips. “Maybe so!” she conceded proudly. “But it's something like that, probably!”

“Probably,” Nona echoed.

She said goodbye to Quin, then left the bar to get back to her work. Her work that she was increasingly aware had very little to do with judging the worth of humans' souls.

_What is the most fundamental human emotion?_

It happened when Nona was observing some of Tria's guests as part of a regular employee evaluation. The game—checkers—was nearing its conclusion. The guests, had reached their breaking point. They were flooded with memories of their own deaths. One of them, a middle-aged office worker, broke down in tears and collapsed to the ground. “ _Why?!_ ” she wailed. “Why did I die? I haven't even lived!”

Tria took a step toward the woman, her expression carefully neutral. “You were alive. If you were not alive, you could not have died.”

The woman shook her head violently, wiping uselessly at her eyes. “I worked and I worked and I worked and I never took time off or fell in love or had friends or learned to sing!” She struggled to her feet and staggered over to Tria. “What kind of life was that?! I wanted to climb Mount Everest!” She grabbed Tria by the shirt and tugged her sharply forward. “ _Give me my life back! I haven't lived!_ ” the woman screamed.

Tria blinked. The ground shifted under the woman's feet, spikes of stone and tile rising up to latch onto her arms and legs and drag her away from Tria. “I am afraid I cannot do such a thing,” Tria said.

Nona watched from afar and reminded herself to ask Unus how his journey up the tower was going.

The game reached its conclusion soon after the woman's outburst. The participants were judged and sent away regardless of their feelings on the matter. Nona approached Tria in the aftermath. “Say, Tria, what do you think it means to live?” she asked.

Tria glanced at Nona's face (Nona grinned at her, just for good measure), then went back to work picking up the broken game pieces scattered on the floor. “If you die, then you were alive,” she said.

Nona hummed. “I think your guest would disagree with you.”

“I imagine so,” Tria agreed.

“It's not really living unless you can do frivolous things you enjoy. You can't just work...” Nona chuckled. “I wonder if many humans think like that. A lot of them must end up disappointed.” She gave Tria a friendly pat on the back, then headed for the elevator without another word.

Tria rolled her eyes and went back to cleaning.

_What is the most fundamental human emotion?_

Quattuor was the first Arbiter who disappeared under Nona's watch. She had figured out long before that it must happen from time to time, even if no one talked about it or saw it happen. Otherwise, there would never be a need for more Arbiters to be created.

She never heard from him after that, nor did anyone else. She forgot about him before long, the memories purged to make room for more new information. It was not the last time it happened. The cycle continued endlessly, just like everything else.

Every time, in the brief period she could remember the disappearances, she sat outside her house and watched the clouds drift through the sky and wondered what death could be if not an end to existence.

_What is the most fundamental human emotion?_

Her first contact with the elusive Oculus was an invitation to play pool. She accepted, of course. The elevator ride was longer than experience dictated it ought to be. Nona didn't question it.

Her first impression of Oculus, beyond the requisite marveling at his hairstyle, was that he was not as funny as he thought he was. He led her down murky darkened hallways lined with lush plant life, thriving despite the gloom. They emerged on a platform seemingly suspended midair partway up an enormous tower. There were no fences or rails around the edge. Nona wondered if Oculus had ever lost anything down there, and if there was a way to get it back.

The centerpiece of the room was the pool table, lined not with green felt, but with an endless expanse of stars. The balls were planets in miniature, reproduced with perfect accuracy. The setup was every bit as ostentatious as Oculus was pretending not to be.

Nona didn't let him waste her time with small talk and introductions. They got right down to business, such as it was. Oculus waxed philosophical as they played, which was also not nearly as impressive as he thought it was.

“Nothing is everlasting,” he said, striking Mercury with his cue. “Humans don't think about it in life, but when they finally kick the bucket and end up here, they always whine about how they should have done this or that, or been more honest with each other...”

“That's the tragedy of a limited lifespan,” Nona said as she lined up her shot. “You would think they would get more of that done while they have time.” The balls went sailing across the backdrop of void in smooth straight lines. Venus dropped easily into a corner pocket. Nona smiled at Oculus. “Your move.”

Oculus whined and pouted and took a clumsy shot that left him in an even worse position than before. Nona couldn't fathom why he challenged her to a game he was so obviously unskilled at. He cleared his throat and regained his usual friendly but decidedly authoritative bearing, leaning on his cue with forced casualness. “They can't. Humans can't bring themselves to do the things they really want to do.” He laughed, then stared Nona down with his bright green snakelike eyes. “Nona, do you know what the most fundamental human emotion is?”

A shiver ran down Nona's spine. She kept her smile firmly in place and stared back at Oculus, no matter how much she wanted to avert her eyes. She was never more aware than in this moment that there was always someone watching over the tower, watching every Arbiter's every move. She shook her head. “I don't know,” she said.

Oculus grinned toothily at her, his pupils narrowing to barely-there slits. “Well, you wouldn't. You're an Arbiter, after all.” He stroked his beard with a knowing smile. “There's a reason the games are set up the way they are. Humans won't be honest until they're pushed to their limits. The only way to see who they really are at their cores is to put them in extreme situations. Otherwise, they'll keep up their little acts forever.” He jerked his chin toward the table. “Your move, Nona.”

Nona walked around the pool table, surveying the planets' positions. “The way the games are set up...?” she said. Physical pain, humiliation, betrayal, competition, high stakes. She looked up at Oculus. “Ah. I see.” She lined up her next shot and sunk two planets in one go. Oculus groaned.

“You should go easy on this old man...” he said, his shoulders sagging.

“This old man should learn to play,” Nona replied. She chalked the tip of her cue, studiously avoiding looking at him.

The game carried on. Oculus improved so quickly over the game that Nona was certain he was intentionally holding back at the beginning. It didn't matter. Nona beat him easily, and would have even if he were playing at full blast from the first move. She smiled and gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder once they'd put away the equipment and straightened the place up a bit. “Better luck next time!” she chirped.

Oculus sighed the sigh of a thoroughly defeated man. Nona backed off with a soft chuckle and began to make her way back toward the elevator, tucking her arms into her suspenders as she walked. Oculus shook his fist at her retreating back with playful indignation. “I'll get you someday!” he said. He paused for just long enough to to put Nona on edge. It wasn't quite conspicuous, so she could hardly call him out on it, but the silence was distinct and heavy. “You know that, don't you, Nona?” he added, his tone too sweet by far.

Nona froze in her tracks for just a moment, no longer than the not quite significant but _almost_ pause. She smiled over her shoulder at Oculus. “Of course,” she agreed easily.

She turned back around left Oculus's realm unaccosted and unharmed. She could feel those eyes burning holes in her back for the entire journey to the elevator, even long after she was out of Oculus's sight.

She told the elevator operator to take her back to the ninetieth floor. He did so without comment. She leaned back against the elevator and closed her eyes. Arbiters cannot stop handing down judgments, except when they do. Arbiters can neither live nor die, except when they do. With two out of three gone, why would the third be true?

_What is the most fundamental human emotion?_

Nona sighed and rubbed her bare forearms, rough with goosebumps. The hair on the back of her neck stood straight up. She smiled at nothing as she felt the elevator begin to move her back toward home.

_It's fear._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you watch a mediocre anime and you think, "what if instead of working on my 1000 other projects, I wrote a melodramatic introspective piece about this unimportant loli side character while totally ignoring the actual narrative and emotional drive of the show?"
> 
> ...No?? That's just me???


End file.
